An account of a visit to Palestine over 60 years ago

(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

To grow oranges for profit and pleasure, was one of my prewar ambitions. And in the course of learning the business I met, at different times and places, some exceptional persons including Mustapha Kemal Pasha Ataturk, Emir Abdullah, King of Jordan, and Mrs. Golda Meir, now Foreign Minister of Israel.

By reading magazines and books on citriculture I had already become an arm-chair orange farmer, just as one becomes an armchair traveller by reading books of travel. But the appetite grows with what it feeds on and I persuaded myself that it was necessary for my purpose to visit a country where oranges were grown scientifically and successfully.

Of course it could not have been only a desire to learn how to grow citrus fruits that prompted me to take a tourist class passage to Port Said, and entrain for Jerusalem from El Kantara, a railway station on the Canal bank. Incidentally, it was easier to do this 25 years ago than it is today. There was no exchange control then, travel was relatively cheap and the whole of Palestine was a British mandate.

“To sail beyond the sunset” is an urge which anyone who has gone to school within sight of ships as we did at St. Thomas’s College, Mutwal, cannot readily resist. I set out with no plan but hope to inspect orange groves, acquaint myself with the cradle of three great religions, and observe some of the interesting experiments in agriculture and land settlement carried out by Jews in the sandy wastes of Palestine.

The train, which took me one morning up the holy hill of Zion, ran on the track which General Allenby had put down 20 years earlier to fight the Turks. Jerusalem is an interesting city seen from every approach to it, except the northern.

What I saw was a mediaeval town, capable of conjuring up Biblical images, and very different from what it is today. There were a few modern buildings like the splendid YMCA, King David’s hotel, the Jewish Agency headquarters and a bank or two.

Camel caravans still passed down the streets, and Bedouin from the desert strode with dust on their beards and eye lashes, tapping their staves on the ancient stones.

Jerusalem is now rent in twain. There are barbed-wire barricades, sentries mounting guard, neutral zones and watchtowers. One may not walk as I did, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, when the almond trees are in bloom, stopping for a rest outside the reputed house of Lazarus at Bethany.

A few minutes after I had put my bag at my place of lodging, I set out with a sense of expectation, nay excitement, towards the Jaffa gate of the old wall city. I carried with me H.V. Morton’s recently published book called “In the Steps of the Master.”

I suppose the first place any civilized visitor to the Jordan side of Jerusalem would want to go to is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You are as likely as not to see a peasant woman kneeling in prayer before the Tomb of Christ.

Walking along the narrow lanes, I reached the Gate of St. Stephen, and strolled through it under the gnarled olive trees of the Garden of Gethsamane. Later I climbed towards the Mount of Olives where lived the British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope. It would not be possible to make these perambulations now.

On the second day of my visit, I called on an old Ceylon official, Mr. R. G. B. Spicer, formerly Superintendent of Police, Colombo. He was now Inspector-General of Police, Palestine, and wore a blue uniform, like that of a Turkish officer, complete with astrakhan cap. Mr. Spicer loved Palestine. He said that the climate in the spring, when the poppies came out, was like champagne. One could not but feel safe in a country in which the head of the police was your friend.

In those days there were few important cities in the world where a Ceylonese could not find a warm welcome from a fellow countryman. There was Mr. Kira in New York, Mr. Dean Ismail in Istanbul, Mr. Sarlis in Marseilles, and some near relations of Sir Mohamed Macan Markar in Cairo and Jerusalem.

Often I dropped in for a Ceylon meal at the house of Sir Mohamed’s nephew who was in charge of the family jewellery shop in King David’s hotel in Jerusalem.

One day, Mr. J. N. Arumugan and I were in the Winter Palace hotel in Jericho, after a visit to the Dead Sea, when the Emir Abdullah, king of Transjordania, saw us and invited us to take coffee with him. In the course of conversation he showed us a magnificent ruby which he had bought at Macan’s shop.

Every time I entered the Macan Markar house in Mamilia Road, I was greeted by a young Arab servant who kissed my hand. This is an old custom designed to make sure that the guest is not carrying a lethal weapon.

I once spent a day with Sir Mohamed at Cairo, where he was visiting the family business in Shephard’s Hotel. We ate a lucullean Arab meal at his favourite restaurant, during which he told me that whenever he left Ceylon on a trip he took a precious stone and sold it. The proceeds were more than sufficient to cover all his expenses.

Although nobody spoke in those days about a future Jewish state in Palestine, there was evidence everywhere that the Jewish National Home was in fact a state within a state. The Jews had their own university, banks, education and health services, trade unions and cultural life.

It was a time of transition and, with the best will in the world, the British found it difficult to carry out the mandate to the satisfaction of any of the parties concerned. A minor example of this was the administration of justice in three languages. I was present in a law court where the Chief Justice was an Irishman and his colleagues were a Jew and an Arab. A Jewish advocate addressed the court in Hebrew and an Arab advocate addressed it in Arabic. The Attorney General spoke as `amicus curiae’ in English.

One day I went to the Jewish National Fund Offices in Jerusalem and gathered as much information as I could about Jewish activities in Palestine. I was then given a letter to Mrs. Golda Myerson who lived in Tel Aviv. She had just been appointed to the executive committee of the labour organization called Histadrut and was, according to my informant, a live wire.

I had already arranged to spend a fortnight in Tel Aviv and the Jewish farms in the neighbourhood. Tel Aviv itself had sprung up in a suburb of Jaffa (Joppa of the Bible). The housing squeeze in Jaffa had compelled the increasing number of Jews who were arriving in the country to build themselves homes

on the sand dunes near the Mediterranean coast. Hitler’s persecution of Jews was the main cause of the remarkable growth of Tel Aviv within a few years into a modern city, with its plag (a beach by the sea), concert halls, modern flats and a main street named after General Allenby. But it still had the features of a boom town.

The Myersons, husband, wife and two children lived in a half-completed house in a new area. I learned more about the aims and aspirations of the Zionist movement from Mrs. Myserson than from anyone else. Since then, I have followed her career with interest. She became the head of a Political Department of the Jewish Agency and, when Israel became an independent state, she went as ambassador to Russia. She held other offices before she became Foreign Minister in 1956. Mrs. Myerson has now shortened her name to Meir.

Three years ago (when this was written), I was appointed Ceylon Minister to Israel, but when I was about to leave for Jerusalem, I was instructed by cable not to proceed. It was a disappointment to me because I had looked forward to meeting the Foreign Minister whom I had known when she was in charge of a small labour office in Tel Aviv.

Walking from Tel Aviv to Rehovath, I stopped to watch a very intellectual looking young man washing the drains of a cowshed. I got into conversation with him and discovered that he was a Doctor of Science and the son of J.L. Magnes, the distinguished Rector of the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. He was engaged in experiments directed at increasing the milk yields of Syrian cows by crossing them with Friesian bulls. As he employed no labourers he washed the cowsheds himself.

I also observed that students at the University not only made their own tennis courts but planted forests – a difficult operation in inhospitable soil – as a memorial to famous men and women.

I wandered about Palestine like a nomad, living sometimes in Jewish co-operative farms with names such as Nahalal, Degania. Peta-Tikvah and Bivath Brenner. I spent time in Bethlehem. Nazareth, Galilee and Carmel.

In the midst of all this activity I did not neglect my study of citriculture. I drank half a gallon of orange juice everyday. I saw orange heaps outside packing houses in Jaffa and elsewhere almost as large as coconut heaps in the Chilaw district.

The Israelis, by self-sacrifice, hard work and intelligence, have transformed their part of the country into a modern western state. But both they and the Arabs have many problems to solve.

I left for Damascus by the desert route to gain further knowledge about how to grow oranges.

(This article was first published in 1961)